British mathematician Sir Andrew Wiles won 2016 Abel Prize

 British mathematician Sir Andrew Wiles on 15 March 2016 was named as the winner of the 2016 Abel Prize by the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters in Oslo.
•    Wiles won the award for solving a centuries-old hypothesis, Fermat's Last Theorem.
•    Crown Prince Haakon will present the award to Wiles in May 2016 for an achievement that the academy described as an epochal moment for mathematics.
•    Sir Andrew John Wiles is a Royal Society Research Professor at the University of Oxford, specialising in number theory.
•    He is most notable for proving Fermat's Last Theorem.
•    He earned his bachelor's degree in mathematics in 1974 at Merton College, Oxford, and a PhD in 1980 at Clare College, Cambridge.
•    In 1985–86, he was a Guggenheim Fellow at the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques near Paris and at the École Normale Supérieure.
•    From 1988 to 1990, he was a Royal Society Research Professor at the University of Oxford. He rejoined Oxford in 2011 as Royal Society Research Professor.
•    In number theory, Fermat's Last Theorem states that no three positive integers a, b, and c satisfy the equation an + bn = cn for any integer value of n greater than two. The cases n = 1 and n = 2 are known to have infinitely many solutions since ancient times.
•    The theorem was first conjectured by Pierre de Fermat in 1637.
•    However, the first successful proof was released in 1994 by Andrew Wiles. It was formally published in 1995, after 358 years of effort by mathematicians.
•    It is among the most notable theorems in the history of mathematics and prior to its proof it was in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most difficult mathematical problem.
•    The Abel Prize is a Norwegian prize awarded annually by the Government of Norway to one or more outstanding mathematicians.
•    It is named after Norwegian mathematician Niels Henrik Abel.
•    The award was established in 2001 by the Government of Norway.
•    It comes with a monetary award of 6 million Norwegian kroner.
•    The Abel Prize is described as the mathematician's Nobel Prize.
•    John F. Nash, Jr. And Louis Nirenberg were the winners of the 2015 Abel Prize.